The Giraffe In Our House

How my mother handled the little things

“Shut the door! You’re letting the draft in!” My mother’s voice, as my sister, then four years old, proceeded to panic and run, screaming, to hide in our bedroom. Apparently, she had mistaken the word “draft” for “giraffe”, and was thoroughly convinced the zoo animal was at her heels. My three-year-old brother stood wide-eyed, frozen in his tracks by this scene of confusion. He was terrified of feathers and jello. Sometimes, at her wit’s end, my mother would capitalize on our phobias. For instance, to keep this brother in his bed at nap time, she would place a feather in his bedroom doorway. I don’t know if he got any sleep, but he by God stayed in his bed.

This may seem like a cruel and extreme practice, but was actually a self-defense mechanism by my mother. There are five children, each with not much more than a year between our births. She was outnumbered. For many years, I would answer to “Sue-Sonnie-Skip-Steve-Goddammit, Sharon!”

“You’re always yelling at the kids”, my father remarked to my mother one day. My mother replied, “We have five kids. If one out of five misbehaves every twenty-five minutes, then I’m yelling every five minutes.”

My oldest brother, eventually having three children of his own, asked my mother, with more than a little amazement, “How did you do it? How did you manage to raise five children without going crazy? “I did’t,” my mother replied. “I AM crazy.”

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Sharon Hudson 2024